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Longing for Cantilenas: “Die Deutsche Bühne”

Detlef Brandenburg has published an article well worth reading in the current edition of the specialist journal “Die Deutsche Bühne” (1/09) (The German Stage) on the premiere of Peter Ruzicka’s new opera “HÖLDERLIN.” Among other things, one can read the following:

“Ruzicka has, time and again, allowed himself to be led by aesthetic identification figures in his composing whose inspiration extends far beyond the individual work. He has come to terms with Hölderlin, the desperate visionary of a pantheistic unity, in the symphonic study ‘Vorecho’ (Pre-Echo) and in the music for 22 strings entitled ‘…ins Offene…’ (…into the Open …), among other works, the structures of which then went into the opera in a revision (Ruzicka himself speaks of ‘painting over’). For this reason, ‘Hölderlin’ is, on the one hand, marked by contrasts of different formal types already tried out in other works; on the other hand, the opera itself lives from the principle of ‘painting over,’ in which certain modules continually resurface in ever-new modifications. There thus arises a dialectic of disparity and reconciliation –already here there is an initial parallel to the poet, who sang of unity in his poetry and went mad because it was irredeemable in real life.”